Hermione Granger and the Vortices of Time
by Terahlyanwe
Summary: Hermione, Ron, and Harry are hunting horcruxes in the Forest of Deen when Harry begins acting strangely. The Doctor, meanwhile, is desperately tracking the Master through space and time. The two incidents couldn't possibly be related...or could they?


Hermione Granger's mind wandered as she and Ron Weasley and Harry Potter walked through the Forest of Deen, now in pursuit of one of the final horcruxes keeping the Dark Lord Voldemort alive and immortal. No one spoke; it had been a long day of hiking and hunting, and all three were exhausted. It was now nearing evening, and their shadows were beginning to lengthen.

Hermione was considering calling a halt for the day when Harry suddenly drew up short and stopped her and Ron. "Do you hear that?" he asked. Ron and Hermione looked at each other cautiously.

Harry had been acting strangely for the past few days but neither of them had been able to come up with a reason for it. Looking back at Harry, Hermione asked carefully: "What is it you hear, Harry?"

He looked at her as if she had been transfigured into a brick wall. "The drums!" he said, as if it should be obvious. "Can't you hear them?"

This time it was Ron who spoke: "There are no drums, mate. There's no one around for miles; it's just us three…and we don't hear nothing."

"Then you aren't listening hard enough!" Harry shouted, his demeanor changing suddenly from mild irritation to outrage as he lunged for Hermione, grabbing at her face.

"Stupefy!" Ron and Hermione chorused, wands raising and casting the spell before Harry's hand made contact, causing him to collapse onto the dirt of the forest floor.

The trees echoed for a few moments with the fading cries of the two young magicians, gradually growing quiet once more.

"What the devil was all that about?" Ron asked Hermione; his red face a mask of confusion and shock.

"I—I don't know," Hermione replied shakily. Bending over Harry's prostrate form, she checked his vitals.

"He shouldn't be out this long after a simple stunning curse like that one," she said after a while, standing up.

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she saw Ron stand bolt upright, stiffen, and start to shake violently. Cursing under her breath (without her wand), she started fishing in her mokeskin pouch for a book she was fairly certain would contain information about seizures as found in the wizarding world. It had never crossed Hermione's mind prior to this moment that such muggle maladies as seizures would exist in a world with a magical cure for literally everything, including broken bones and cancer.

As she flipped through the pages to find a healing spell, she reflected on Harry's recent strange behavior. It had started less than a week ago with a sudden distrubing spike in his his hunger. One day he had been the normal Harry Potter: laughing, joking and questing for horcruxes. The next, he saw everything as food. The first act that had brought this to Ron and Hermione's attention was when Ron had off-handendly remarked that he had just seen a hare. Harry had instantly wheeled and brandished his wand in the direction Ron indicated, casting the killing curse on the poor creature. He had then proceeded to devour the entire beast before their eyes without bothering to cook or even skin it first.

Hermione shuddered at the memory. It had only gotten worse from that point on. His personality didn't seem to change at all, but every time they saw any sort of living creature, Harry would repeat the performance with little variation. When Hermione had once ventured to ask him why he did it, he answered smilingly, "I'm just _so _hungry." The blood and fur of the squirrel he had happened to be consuming at that moment stuck to his mouth and chin, while bits of flesh stuck between his teeth, completing the grotesque image.

Hermione was jarred out of her reverie when a voice behind her said, "Hello? Can you hear me? Am I coming through yet?" Whirling around, wand out, Hermione saw only Ron standing there, now completely rigid.

"Hello?" she called out. "Who's there? Show yourself!"

"Yeah… that might be a bit difficult," said Ron. Only it was not Ron's voice…somehow it was higher, more nasal. And was that a hint of a Scottish accent she detected? She didn't remember Ron having a Scottish accent, and she had been fairly certain she knew the boy rather well.

"Who are you, and what have you done with Ronald?" she demanded as she brandished her wand in Ron's face, allowing a trace of fear to creep into her voice. He still didn't move.

"Well, that's a little hard to explain." Ron's mouth claimed while the rest of him stared off into the distance. "You can call me the Doctor, by the way."

Hermione was speechless. She wondered if perhaps this "doctor" had cast some form of the Imperius curse on Ron, but that wouldn't account for the changed voice. Also, the frozen effect of the Imperius curse usually wore off after a few moments; a time shorter than the duration between when Ron had started speaking and this moment. She supposed that it could be a new spell she had not heard of, or possibly a combination of multiple spells….

"Sorry to bother you," the Doctor/Ron said, "but do you think you could hand me a makeup mirror or something of the sort? The mind transferal is nearly complete, so I can use my—Ronald's—arms now. I would like to get a look at this body."

Wordlessly, Hermione pulled a mirror out of her mokeskin pouch and handed it to this strange man, mentally going over what he had said. _If I give him the mirror_, she reasoned, _that will give me at least a little more time to figure out how to get Ron back. _He had said 'mind transferal.' She wasn't sure what exactly that meant, but she deduced that since he had used a word like transferal, Ron's mind must be somewhere else, rather than overwritten with this man's mind like an old CD or tape that has been recorded over, losing the original data. Or at least that's what the Doctor wanted her to think.

Looking in the mirror, the Doctor punched the air with abundant enthusiasm: "Yes! I've done it! I've _done _it! I'm _finally _ginger!"

Finding her voice at last, Hermione yanked the mirror out of a suddenly hurt looking Doctor/Ron's hands: "Where is Ron's mind, and again: who the devil _are _you?"

The Doctor smiled a huge grin and stuck a protruding finger in her face. "You're a bright one; I can tell already. I'm good at that sort of thing. As to Ronald, he is perfectly safe. In my body. In a different universe…yeah, come to think of it, I can understand why you're a bit concerned. But don't worry, he's with Rose—"

"Rose?!" Hermione shouted. This was the final straw; she knew how much of a flirt Ron tried to be sometimes. "Who the _devil _is Rose?!"

"Oh, she's this adorable little blonde I picked up in London last year. Well, last year for me, but for a human it would probably be more like—"

Without waiting for further explanation, Hermione shouted for the second time in thirty minutes: "Stupefy!"

A few minutes later, the Doctor looked up groggily. "Well," he said, "I can honestly say that's never happened to me before. Why exactly did you do that?"

Hermione could barely speak through her teeth, they were clenched so hard. "You left my Ron ALONE with a 'cute blonde you picked up in London last year.'" She didn't even attempt to conceal the sarcasm in her voice. "ALONE. I ought to put the Cruciatus curse on you—"

Forcing herself to calm down, she lowered the wand she suddenly realized was still in the Doctor's face and unclenched her fists, causing the makeup mirror to drop, having forgotten it was still in her hand.

Sighing, she got up from the straddling position she had been in over the Doctor/Ron's chest and picked the mirror up from the ground, only to discover the surface had cracked under the pressure of her fist.

"Reparo." she whispered bitterly, tossing the like-new mirror back into her pouch. It must have knocked something off a shelf on its way to the bottom as there were several audible thuds as it descended into the depths of the bag.

Upon hearing the clatter, the Doctor stood up quickly, that huge grin never having entirely left his face.

"Could I see your bag?" he asked. Politely, Hermione noted. _He at least _wants_ to be friendly._

Resignedly, Hermione disentangled herself from the straps of her pouch and handed it over to this strange man.

Upon opening the bag and peering in, the Doctor's grin became impossibly wide. "It's…it's…" he reached his arm in as far as it would go and wriggled it around some.

"It's bigger on the inside." Hermione finished for him, matter-of-factly. "What of it?"

The Doctor laughed an unbelieving laugh. "_I _usually get to say that line. I am beginning to like you more and more, miss… I'm afraid I don't actually know your name!" He looked horrified at the concept. "How incredibly rude of me! I come in here, and take your boyfriend's body and scare you half to death without so much as asking for your name!"

She smiled in spite of herself. Notwithstanding the strange introduction to this odd person she had received, she found herself liking him a great deal.

"It's Granger. Hermione Granger. And yes, it was a little rude," she smiled.

"What a nice name!" the Doctor replied. "It sounds familiar somehow… No. What? No. That's not possible…but.. the magical sticks, the boy named Ronald, and YOU." A look of astonishment mixed with absolute delight crossed the Doctor's face. "YOU, Miss Granger, are amazing! Fantastic!" he rubbed his hands together in glee.

Harry chose that moment to groan and roll over, planting his face firmly in the earth.

"If you're Hermione, and I'm in Ron Weasley's body, then that must be..." he trailed off. "So does Harry often take naps face-first in the dirt, or is that a new development?" he asked as he walked over toward the mostly motionless figure prostrate on the ground, dropping onto his haunches when he was withn three feet.

Without really knowing why, Hermione somehow felt that she could trust this man, and so she quickly summed up what sort of strange behaviors Harry had been exhibiting recently, from the bizarre eating habits to his most recent insistent declaration of the existence of drums silent to all the world but himself. As her story approached the current situation, Hermione observed that the Doctor's previously joyous expression had been replaced with one of concern and sadness.

After a few moments of silence, the Doctor looked up at Hermione seriously. "I had almost forgotten the reason I needed to come to your universe in the first place. I've been tracking down a very dangerous being through time and space, and I think he has been slowly taking control of your friend. His name is the Master, and unfortunately he is in a sense my brother. With magic at his beck and call, he will be unstoppable." The Doctor looked tired and sad, as if the entire weight of the universe had fallen suddenly upon his shoulders. "Hermione Granger, I need your help... to kill Harry Potter."

* * *

Author Note: I didn't write this! My boyfriend-who doesn't have time to maintain a fanfiction dot net account-is the author of this chapter. We may end up making the story a collaboration. Enjoy!


End file.
